Appreciate Your Friends
by Sonnerman42
Summary: Appreciate Your Friends is a story about a group of friends who undergo a life changing situation and all want to handle it differently, the story contains lots of surprises as you read on, and hopefully will want to keep on reading. The story could somewhat resemble an anime most people have watched but as it further is delved into it will look less and less like said show, enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

_A story solely written by me and edited by me, I'm not a writer that makes everything so predictable, so enjoy. -S_

Day 1

Mangetsu awoke to the alarm clock ringing it's fourth snooze, "ALRIGHT ALRIGHT." Mangetsu got up and checked the time, 7:23. He stretched a bit and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, after brushing he looked at himself to check if anything was wrong with how he looked, his dark blue eyes that looked as if they were the deepest parts of the ocean stared at his unkempt hair and decided whether or not he should keep it like that. After a couple minutes Mangetsu came to the decision that he should just keep it like that, as it would have taken too much time for him to fix it. He got dressed in his school uniform and with his backpack he left his house. Mangetsu checked the time once more on his brand new iPhone 6, 7:45. He had 15 minutes to get to his school on a 15 minute trail. He did not want to be late on his first day of school on his last year for sure, it would leave a terrible first impression.

10 Minutes Later

Bam! The sound of Mangetsu running into someone a little smaller than him with light brown hair and plain brown eyes made. "Oww.." The boy rubbed his head and got up, "Watch where you're going!" Mangetsu looked at him wondering who this guy thought he was and said, "Uh, sorry. I was trying to catch up to some friends on my way to school.. It's the first day and all." The kid stared at him as his eyes brightened, "Yes! I've been looking for the way to the school all morning, do you go to Nakashima High School?" Mangetsu blankly looked at him as he stood up, "Yeah.. It's just a couple minutes from here, you're new obviously so I won't ask that, but what's your name?" The boy grinned and said, "Shouta's the name and math's my game!" To which Mangetsu gave him a 'you're dead to me' face. Shouta laughed and said, "Just kidding! I suck at math!" Mangetsu began to walk as they were talking, "Yeah, come sit with me at lunch and I'll introduce you to some people I guess since you're new." And they walked to the school from then on chatting it up.

1st Hour - World History

Mangetsu had just finished completing his work when Miharu came to him, Miharu was the prettiest girl in the entire school and Mangetsu's best friend. "So what're ya doing?" Mangetsu flipped the finished paper over and looked at her, "Nothing now. What's up?" Miharu hugged him and asked, "I'm sick of boys looking at me like this.. I wouldn't be single if boys were just respectful and would stop." Mangetsu laughed out loud, "Please that's like one of the many reasons you're single." Miharu punched him on the shoulder, "So why were you late today?" She said not surprised, "Oh I met this weird kid by running into him, I was gonna introduce my friends to him and maybe you could leave the pretty girl table for like.. a couple minutes and come meet the guy, he's new to the school." Miharu thought about it for a second and shrugged, "Why the hell not? I'll meet the new kid." Mangetsu laughed, "Cool. Meet us where we usually go." Miharu nodded and then the bell rang.

2nd Hour - Trigonometry

Mangetsu sat with his head down on his desk not wanting to look at the horrid scene they call an education at the front of the classroom, a boy with glasses and short black hair shook Mangetsu, "Wake up this is actually interesting." Mangetsu nodded his head as he groaned, "Why would you do this to me Takumi.. Don't make me suffer.." As a worn out Mangetsu was quickly falling back into oblivion, a loud smack on his desk made him jump up, "Holy shit." Mangetsu said as his knees hit the desk. He looked beside him where the sound came from and saw a ruler connected to an extremely curvy woman in clothing that barely revealed any cleavage, as if it was meant to tease men with, she had long blonde hair and eyes the color of the sky. "Have you been listening, Mr mmm-" "Mangetsu." Takumi said to her. "Thank you, Takumi! Alright now Mangetsu, please stop falling asleep in my class and pay attention to my introduction!" She said this and walked back to the front of the room, to which Mangetsu's eyes followed. Takumi laughed as he looked at Mangetsu's silent expression and they both went back to work for the rest of the hour.

3rd Hour - Physical Education

Mangetsu sat down on the floor next to his peers like children, "The first day of school is really boring" whispered one student to another. Mangetsu looked around to see if he could find any familiar faces, he counted three. 'Iwaji, Shouta, and Aya.' He thought to himself. Iwaji was a dark brown haired boy who spiked it up any day he had the time, Aya was a small-breasted brunette girl who has been dating Takumi for 2 years. Mangetsu did not get the time to socialize as the lecture from the teacher lasted the entire hour.

4th Hour - Anatomy

One of Mangetsu's favorite classes due to the excessive amounts of dissection they did in the class, or so he heard from a graduate last year. The teacher began it's lecture as well and looked around to see only one familiar face, one he did not want to see. It was Aria, Takumi, Iwaji, and Kentaro's ex-girlfriend. She had overly dyed hair that was at the moment blue, and wore a lot of makeup. Mangetsu groaned aloud and knew that this was not gonna be a fun year for him until the teacher spoke up, "Now this is a new student to our school, everyone make sure to introduce yourselves to him." Mangetsu then looked up to see who the new student was, it was Shouta. Shouta eyed the students and was nervous as he said, "Hi.. I'm Shouta." The teacher noticed he was nervous and told him, "Alright we'll let you introduce yourself to individuals near the end of the class, why don't you take a seat by Aria?" Shouta nodded and saw Mangetsu sitting at the other side of the student and waved at him. Mangetsu looked at him with disdain and thought to himself, 'Hopefully he doesn't talk to her.. Or I'd probably not interact with him at all.' And he then took the time to plug in his earphones while the teacher went on to introduce herself to the class. It was now near the end of the class and Mangetsu got up to see Shouta, "I'll be waiting for you at our table in the lunchroom, you'll know it when you see it." And Mangetsu went off to the lunchroom as the bell rang for lunch.

5th Hour - Lunch

Mangetsu was the first to sit at the only brown table in the entire cafeteria of white tables, he sat down and pulled out his phone waiting on his other friends as he did not feel like getting lunch just yet, a mistake he would later on regret. After a couple of minutes Shouta came to the table first and asked, "Where's everyone else?" To which mangets replied with, "Just sit down and wait." And not a minute later a group of people all had their food and were heading this way. Shouta was shocked to think Mangetsu had so many friends with the kind of personality he had. They all sat down and Mangetsu stood up as he pulled Iwaji up, "Iwaji, this is Shouta. Shouta, this is Iwaji." The two shook each other's hands and Iwaji sat back down to eat. Mangetsu then pulled up two darker skinned boys and said, "This is Kentaro and Cai, Cai is Kentaro's little brother." Cai grinned brightly while Kentaro shook his hand and they both sat down. He pulled up a shorter blonde haired girl and a black haired girl and said, "This is Ayumi, and this is Yuki.. They're sisters." They waved not wanting to shake his hand and sat back down. As time went on Mangetsu introduced just about everybody else and then Miharu came to the table to introduce herself, Shouta blushed and could only stare at her, "I'm Miharu." She said and shook his hand, "I-I'm Shouta." He said and looked down as if he was unworthy until Mangetsu whispered loudly into his ear, "It's ok, she has a lot more flaws than you can see." And everyone laughed as Miharu got mad at Mangetsu. The rest of lunch was happy and full of laughter. The TV's in the lunchrooms all changed directly to the news and then a news reporter said, "This is Channel 9 News and this is an important nationwide broadcast to any and all people of Japan, an outbreak of a deadly virus has spread, as you can see we have one of these contaminated in this bench here and... oh, It seems he's died.. We don't know where this virus has come from or how it spreads, but currently we have found two cases of it and that's it.. Lock your doors and refrain from opening your doors to anyone, be sa-" when suddenly in the background the seemed to be dead patient sprung from the bed it was locked on to tightly, and came and bit the doctor in the room. The students could hear the screaming of the news reporter as the cameraman dropped the camera to run away, the doctor that had been bit all of a sudden came back to life as well and started running towards the way the cameraman went and then the TV's shut off. It was silent for two minutes which would be one of the most peaceful moments Mangetsu and his friends would have in a long time, all the students suddenly went crazy and needed to go check on their families and hide with them, some teachers felt the same. All the students at the one brown table sat in shock staring at eachother.

Day 1, Part 1 End.


	2. Chapter 2

Day 1, Part 2

Mangetsu couldn't help but sit there in shock, thinking of his family at home. He knew it would not be good if he tried to go back, but at the same time felt like it was an obligation to go back. He got up and saw Ms. Kishiyama and he gathered up his friends and went up there, "What's the most secure place in this school, ma'am?" Mangetsu coarsely asked as he could not help but fear the current crisis and it's cost. "First, I want you children to grab some food from the lunchroom that could at the least feed twenty people for a couple days" Everyone thought Ms. Kishiyama was calm and collected but Mangetsu could see the fear she had in her eyes and the facial expression that was ready to lose it's composure. Mangetsu grabbed a little bit extra as he had not eaten lunch yet and couldn't help it. Quickly the group of friends along with many other students and teachers hurriedly ran to the one room they felt would be an appropriate place to stay in, the gymnasium. The gymnasium had lots of space and seats where people could sleep on, it did not sound comfortable to some of the students, but they thought it was better than school desks and didn't complain, the gym also only had two entrances to it, which could easily be watched from a distance. Ms. Kishiyama suddenly yelled among the panicked crowd of questions and cries, "EVERYONE SHUT UP!" and the group looked up towards her as she let out a few words, "I'm sad and worried too." She took a deep breath, "But we should take this time to calmly wait this out and call an attendance.. Now I'm going to pass out a paper where everyone will sign their name." Shouta handed her a paper and she signed her name on it as she handed it to the other teachers, "This is so we can keep track of the students and assure your safety during the couple days this is hopefully resolved by the military." The paper eventually came back to Ms. Kishiyama and she counted the names, "29 people total, 25 students and 4 Teachers. Be nice to eachother in the time we have stuck in this school, the only enemy we have right now is whatever that outbreak is, I'm done talking now.." As she finished the group of friends gathered together in one of the parts of the gym and Kentaro spoke up, "We've got to plan for the worst in this kind of situation." Mangetsu looked at Kentaro, "Good to see the glass is half full with you." and sat down on the floor. Mangetsu eyed his phone as he wanted to check in on his parents but decided it was for the best he kept it off. He wondered how long he could stay cooped up like this before he went crazy. Shouta sat by him in an effort to cheer him up in which Mangetsu gave him a, "Fuck off." And Shouta left him alone. Miharu grabbed Shouta by the shoulder and turned him around, "Leave him alone for now, this is how he handles things." And so Shouta nodded in agreement to leave him alone.

Several Hours Later

Mangetsu still sat where he originally was except now with a bag of chips Miharu had left him. It was now 5:37 and absolutely nothing to do. Mangetsu was busy putting things together by himself on the floor so the others decided they should do something to entertain themselves. Iwaji came up with the bright idea that they should sneak home and bring back his new gaming PC and play lots of games, Ayumi slapped him and said, "This is no joke. Stop acting like that." It was evident Ayumi was extremely angry and Yuki pulled her back and whispered into her ear a couple times before Ayumi could finally cool down. During the confusion Kentaro thought this was his moment to shine again, "Exactly! I'm saying to plan for the worst but no ones exactly listening to me here!" Cai then spoke up, "I'm listening bro!" And Kentaro went on, "Mangetsu is busy putting all these pieces together, what if those 'things' break in? We sh-" Takumi then butt in, "But you saw it on the TV, those aren't just things, they were just like us not long ago.." Aya argued with him and said, "But Takumi! Listen to yourself, the keyword here is were, I don't think they can think as they used to anymore.. No sane person would deliberately kill people and cause terror for no good reason!" The only people who disagreed with Aya at this point was Takumi and Miharu. Kentaro then came back to his point, "If they break into this gym, we have GOT to find a way to get out. Now let's look at our options." Kentaro looked around and everyone was silent, "Anyone?" he eyed Shouta particularly seeing as he was the new guy. "Well.. We could try to retake the school, then we could monitor with cameras the school entrances and we would have a kitchen, and the teacher's lounge has more comfortable seating.." As Shouta spoke Kentaro's eyes widened at his realization of the ingenious of Shouta. "Good idea, but the only strong people here would be me and Mangetsu.. I obviously can't go by myself and Mangetsu is.. Y'know." The huddled group looked over and nodded, suddenly Mangetsu got up from where he had been and walked over to the group, "I want to leave tonight."

7:30 PM

Mangetsu ran up to Ms. Kishiyama and asked, "Do you happen to have anything sharp on you, teach?" She looked at Mangetsu and grabbed him by his ear, "What the hell do you think you're doing? Asking for something that can hurt people obviously proves you're not doing something exactly productive." Mangetsu pulled away from her and told her, "I guess the only thing sharp on you is that tongue. I'm leaving tonight whether you like it or not, if you'd like to give me something to defend myself, I'd appreciate it. I don't plan to idly sit here while I don't know the fate of my own parents, it disgusts me." Ms. Kishiyama started to tear up as Mangetsu spoke these words, "You're completely right.. But someone has to watch over these students, and if I don't, who will?" She said looking at the other two teacher who obviously had no teaching capabilities. "I'll come back in a day, and give you an update about the outside world." Ms. Kishiyama grabbed his hand, and have him her switchblade she had kept strapped to her thigh for reasons Mangetsu did not question. "Thanks." And Mangetsu walked back towards the group. "Anyone feel like coming with?" Mangetsu at this point was trying his hardest to be brave when the slightest thing could break his state of mind easily. "I will." a quiet Aria said in the background. Mangetsu did not care for her past faults as he felt this trip would be much better with a companion. "Okay, are you ready?" he said referring to her sanity as she would have to be prepared to endure terrible sights. "Yeah." she told him with a crack in her voice, it was evident she was not ready but he took her regardless and they set off, opening the doors to the world beyond the gymnasium, all Mangetsu and Aria could see was the streets and grass they had walked upon many times. "The only thing missing here is.. life. It's so desolate.. and abandoned." Mangetsu said thinking aloud. They walked along the sidewalk unknowing of how dangerous it actually was. As they had been getting closer to Mangetsu's house, gunshots were heard in the direction of a hospital and both ran for cover in a ditch. A grotesque hand grabbed at Arias left leg to which she screamed and pulled away immediately, a rotting body that had only it's upper half was crawling towards the two and if you looked directly at it, you could see the multiple stabs on it's stomach revealing bugs that were festering inside of its body. Mangetsu smelt the stench it was giving off as they were leaving and was revolted, "Let's hurry to my house.. This is worse than I thought." At this point Mangetsu had checked the time and it was 8:30, it took him a lot longer than usual to get to his house, but he had finally gotten there. He went through the back door as a precaution and asked Aria to keep watch from the back door. She blatantly refused and went inside with him to witness a horrific scene of Mangetsu's parents both dead. Mangetsu sat on the floor and began to bawl, "Why would anyone do this?!" He screamed and cried until he came across a note on the floor that was written in pen shakily. Mangetsu with an unstable voice began to read the note aloud, "To our dear Mangetsu, if you're still alive.. I just want you to be strong, we were weak. If you're looking for the people who shot us.. It's the two of us on the ground. We did not want to suffer in this world to die.. I hope you can forgive us for this, be strong for your weak parents.. please." It was evident the author of this note was in tears as they wrote this and Mangetsu began to bawl again, on the floor were two guns each with a bullet casing near it. "They went well.. Together." Aria said as a way to cheer Mangetsu up, she was tearing up too thinking of how her own parents were doing. "You would never understand.. Leave me alone. We'll go back tomorrow morning.." Mangetsu shakily said with tears streaming down his face. "Alright, let's get some sleep." Mangetsu went to his room he slept in on better days and curled up in a ball in his room, he could not stop bawling.

11:30

Mangetsu had cried himself to sleep and was now not making sound anymore. As Mangetsu was down, Aria took this as a moment to begin writing a note, it read:

Dear Mangetsu, I cannot stay here or at the school, I'll be taking one of those guns your parents have left and I'll leave you one.. I'm sorry this happened to you, but I need to check on my own family and keep them safe, if not.. I'll go alone and learn to survive, goodbye.

Aria had shut the door making lots of noise that Mangetsu could not hear in his deep slumber.

Day 1 End


End file.
